Category: Australia

October 28, 2007 Andy 1 Comments

It took me 8 weeks, but I came to the conclusion that Australia is rather large (much like the road trains, a tenuous link but I wanted to include that photo). Kazakhstan is big, India is Big, Mongolia is big, I know, I’ve driven across all of them. Yet they are mere minions compared to Australia. All bar one of my posts about Australia have been about specific places or events. I’ve given very little wordage to life on the road in between. And trust me, there was a lot of road. We covered over 13,000 km in two months…

October 26, 2007 Andy 0 Comments

It seems so long ago and quite irrelevant now but our week in Sydney before moving onto New Zealand still deserves a mention. We arrived back in Sydney a day before Dan and Holly who’d returned to the UK for 3 weeks. Once again they graciously put us up / put up with us for over a week while we tried to sell Matilda, our trusty camper van. Although she’d treated us well for some 11,000 km, you may recall she gave us problems leading up and during our time in Melbourne. I’d managed to fix that but she was…

October 17, 2007 Andy 4 Comments

Any of you recognise these two? I used to work with both of these chaps in Madrid. Michael moved back to Australia about 4 years ago and Antoon, by another coincidence of timing, was visiting from Holland. They were waiting on Willem, another ex-colleague who was going to join them on a road trip up the east coast. Michael was kind enough to put us up, prepare a multitude of steak on the barbie and show us round town on the Saturday evening. On top of that, having just about made it to their (very nice) house in a rather…

October 16, 2007 Andy 1 Comments

Our time in the South was rushed, cramming in a lot into a short space, much like this post in fact. Heading south from the Red Centre we covered many miles of nothingness. This was in fact the most barren section of the outback that we covered, with what limited vegetation there was standing less than knee high. Gradually as we approached Coober Pedy we were greeted by loads of random high piles of dirt and ancient looking mining machinery scattered about the place. Coober Pedy claims to be Australia’s Opal capital, but I was surprised to learn that there…

October 14, 2007 Andy 0 Comments

I never thought I’d see my name printed in the same paragraph as Steven Fry’s. I know my writing is improving (although my spelling and grammer isn’t) but this is an honor. 🙂 What am I on about? Just another free plug in the hyperlink tennis match that Alan and I seem to have going on at the moment, alan-wright.blogspot.com and while I’m at it another free emotion 😉

October 13, 2007 Andy 0 Comments

Before taking a good look at a detailed map of Australia I was under the impression that Alice Springs and Uluru (Ayres Rock) were very close to each other. I was surprised to learn that this big rock was actually 500 km away, but then I suppose that in Australian Outback terms that is actually just down the road. It was well worth the journey though and the lonely barren 500k just served to add to the feeling of how remote it really is (boo to all those who fly in). Despite the fact that it is just a big…

October 5, 2007 Andy 0 Comments

Leaving Kakadu we figured that we could just about manage the 1300km to Alice Springs in two days if we really pushed it. The reason? To make the Henley on Todd Regatta. It was a mission of a drive and although 1300km may not sound that much, I can tell you it is in a 27 year old car (with only four gears) when you cannot drive in the dark (the risk of hitting a Kangaroo or Wallaby is just too high). Sharing the driving we made it, but not before I made a nice modification to the front end…

October 4, 2007 Andy 2 Comments

We entered the Northern Territory shortly after leaving Mt Isa and continued our journey northwards towards what the Aussies call the “top end”. The weather changed by the day getting hotter and hotter until we hit Darwin, where it promptly rained on us. Despite the weather I have to say Darwin is a very nice little city and somewhere I could spend some time at. In fact, this is exactly what our travel companion, Guillaume, was planning on doing having found work within two days of being here. Darwin boasts an Asian style night market with loads of decent food,…